This article is from page 22 of the 2005-09-06 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 22 JPG
A COROFIN woman who has been making front- page news in China has just returned, after spend- ing a year-and-a-half in the Asian country. Deir- dre Gillespie moved to the city of Cangzhou in January of 2004 and took up a position as an Eng- lish teacher in the Pioneer Secondary School.
The unusual thing about Deirdre’s trip is that, in a city of more than three million people, she was the only Westerner, and for many of the lo- cals the first white person they had ever seen.
“It was really strange. Everywhere I went, people were staring at me and pointing. It was a little lonely at first,’ said the Corofin woman. ‘“Cangzhou is a industrial town in a rural area so they had very little Western influence. They just didn’t know what to make of me.”
Soon after her arrival, Deirdre was surprised to learn that she was about to be front-page news in the local newspaper.
After hearing about a local woman whose bicy- cle was stolen, her school decided to capitalise on its newest celebrity.
“The school heard about a lady who made shoes for beggars. Her bike was stolen, which is a big deal in China because bikes are the main means of transport out there,” she said. “The school gave her a bike and told her that I had bought it for her. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to get credit in the paper for something I didn’t do.”
Following this early media exposure, Deirdre became a regular feature in the local rag. Many stories were written about her, including a second front-page exclusive when she visited the local tourist spot, an iron lion.
‘They were afraid of me at first and they didn’t want to speak English to me, in case I would laugh at them,” she continued. “I didn’t really pay much heed. I didn’t have much Chinese at the time. In the end, I got a bit sick of it.”
For the first three months of her stay at the Pioneer School, Deirdre was teaching more than 1,000 students each week. After the success of the programme, the school began to recruit more Western English teachers.
As strange as the experience might have been, at the end of the day Deirdre is happy that she went to China.,
“Tm really glad I went. I think that it opened up my mind a lot to new things,” she said. “I didn’t know anything about China before I went and the bit I knew turned out to be rubbish. I’d go back in a heartbeat.”